RaveThe Times Literary Supplement (UK)The subject is hardly original: Schweblin’s achievement lies in eschewing the sci-fi dystopias, sentimentalism and formulaic rigidity that burden many novels of this nature. Deftly translated by Megan McDowell, Little Eyes succeeds through its depiction of a world that is profoundly human, not to say quotidian. In line with the very best Latin American writing of the fantástico, the author of Fever Dream (2014) remains faithful to the idea that the true location of the uncanny is at the heart of our reality ... In a globalized world where technology claims to have erased frontiers and within which the transnational market heralds empty promises of economic equality, Little Eyes provides us with a powerful examination of the underlining disparities that persist.
Mark Haber
RaveBOMBLike Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Haber’s novel is a descent into the heart of darkness at the very core of modernity, achieved through a game of conceptual inversions that repeatedly suggest the works of the late Austrian writer Thomas Bernhard. As with Bernhard, this restless inquiry into the labyrinths of obsession is not devoid of hilarity. Haber’s corrosive sense of humor leaves nothing untouched, introducing a picaresque sequence of events that have marked Jacov’s investigation of melancholy ... Haber’s prose is capable of untangling that knot where the insanity of the world meets the rigor of reason, and is characterized by unflinchingly long sentences that hint to where enlightened progress coincides with its opposite ... The echoes of César Aira’s An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter, Juan José Saer’s The Witness, or even Antonio Di Benedetto’s Zama resound with such strength that at times we can imagine Haber to be a Latin American writer.
Kate Briggs
PositiveBOMB...a poignant account of what this translation compulsion might be. She elegantly likens it to the actions of the avid but amateur aerobic exerciser who wakes up every morning to attend her dance class purely for the pleasure of energetically mimicking the gestures of others ... Faithful to this intuition, This Little Art reads like a jubilant tribute to that vital impulse that marks the reader’s attempt to engage with the pleasure of the text at the very basic level of language ... a beautiful homage to the late Barthes ... This Little Art inherits his unfulfilled desire to write a novel and traces around it a convincing plea for the art of translation.
